Ideological Construction Research Articles

Historical and philosophical grotesque/nonsense: Scientific Communism

The article demonstrates how Scientific Communism, an ideological construct of the last three decades of the Soviet period of national history, can be interpreted from philosophical positions. The historical and philosophical concept of G. W. F. Hegel is taken as the starting point of the study, on the basis of which a scientific and academic version of the historical evolution of philosophical thought was formed, which has a paradigmatic status in the historical and philosophical discourse. However, later on, the tendency to expand the horizons of philosophical competence began to manifest itself clearly by including systems that, according to formal and substantive characteristics, do not meet Hegelian disciplinary criteria, and therefore can be qualified as marginal. This will allow us to assert that the historical evolution of philosophical thought is diverse in essence and cannot be theoretically monological, because it includes various forms of philosophizing, as well as discursivethematic contents. Scientific Communism is precisely such a marginal zone, whose philosophical potential can be fully manifested only when the perspective of research interpretation is shifted. The dominant attitude among researchers of humanities to ideology, a characteristic example of which is Scientific Communism, is based on the opinion of K. Marx, who considered it, ideology, an illusory and perverse form of reflection of the world, distorting reality. However, if we follow the installation of D. de Tracy, thanks to which ideology was articulated as an autonomous and socially significant cognitive practice, then the real task of ideology is precisely to form a worldview adequate to reality. Of course, ideology, according to D. de Tracy, will gain a positive effect, as well as philosophical and conceptual persuasiveness, only when mastering the entire complex of paideutical disciplines, such as Grammar, Logic and Ethics. In the case of Scientific Communism, such complexes accompanying and legitimizing each other were dialectical and historical materialism, political economy and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The article is written in memory of Akat Kalistratovich Belykh, Doctor of Philosophy, the first and only head of the Department of Scientific Communism (1962–1992) of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Leningrad Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the A. A. Zhdanov State University.

STATE IDEOLOGY IS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF SUCCESSFUL POLICY AND CREATING STATE DEVELOPMENT

Introduction. The subject of the scientific analysis presented in the report is the concept, the main content characteristics, patterns and priority directions of the content transformation of ideology as a social phenomenon, the problems of the possibility, necessity and difficulties of forming a state ideology, the specifics of its implementation in the context of both new opportunities and a great variety of internal and external threats. It is emphasized that ideology, being in a state of dialectical development, appropriately rethinks the constants and contradictions of objective reality, while maintaining its "civilizational code" and its functional purpose. Methodology and methods. Dialectical-materialistic research model; methods of observation and comparison, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, mental modeling, ascent from the abstract to the concrete. The results of the study. Attention is focused on the dangers of the ideology of great-power chauvinism and geopolitical hegemonism, the fusion of liberalism with the ideology of racism, radical nationalism and fascism, the ideology of spiritual poverty and imbecility. In a comparative cross-country and intercivilizational way, the features of a great variety of ideological concepts are analyzed, the author's position on the prospects for the formation of state ideology in the conditions of pluralism and broad political freedoms of modern Russia is presented. The strategic expediency of maintaining the prohibition of state or mandatory ideology is questioned, the answer to the question of the possibility, necessity and practical significance of state ideology is presented. Justifies the justice of the fact that the state cannot exist without a scientifically based ideological platform in a long historical perspective, that the rejection of the state idea provokes serious failures in values. Discussion and conclusion. Attention is drawn to the ideological, scientific and legal difficulties of the formation of state ideology in the value space of a modern democratic state. As a final conclusion, itis proved that the dominant ideological system consolidating society and ensuring the sovereignty of the Russian statehood can be the ideas of patriotism, legal legality, social justice and humanism, categorical rejection of the ideology of liberal-globalist egocentrism, aggression and political hypocrisy. Which fully corresponds to the ideals and values of a true democratic, legal, social, secular state. The proposals concerning the complex and far from unambiguously interpreted problems of ideological construction and propaganda support of public administration are formulated.

Present-day Importance of Krleža’s Interpretation of Artistic Motifs on Bosnian Medieval Tombstones

The present text provides an analysis of Krleža’s deliberations on medieval Bosnian art, which are most evidently reflected in his views about the tombstones – the stećci. Back in the 1950s, following Tito’s split with Stalin, Miroslav Krleža organized an exhibition in Paris, France, themed “Medieval Art of Yugoslav Peoples”, placing the tombstones in the center of attention. The reason for this lies in the fact that, in their appearance as monuments, he recognized the heretic efforts of the Bosnian Church, which was persecuted in the Middle Ages by Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Similarly, Tito’s Yugoslavia expressed its heretic character by standing up against the Western capitalist bloc – NATO, as well as Stalin’s dogmatism – the Warsaw Pact. The reason for the persecution of the members of the Bosnian Church back in the day was religious, whereas in the 1950s when Yugoslavia was fighting for its independent road towards further building socialism, the split was purely ideological. When the Berlin Wall fell and Yugoslavia was crushed by aggressive nationalist politics, many intellectuals found Krleža’s observations on the importance of the Bosnian medieval tombstones an expression of naïve romanticism, or an ideological construction hiding Tito’s absolute power, and his thirst for power and ethnic balancing. This text attempts to reaffirm Krleža’s deliberations on the tombstones, which, the author of these lines believes have not at all lost their importance, nor do they merely represent “an idealized past”.

Дискурс націєтворення у публіцистиці Ірини Калинець: перманентність традиції

The article makes an approach to understanding Iryna Kalynets’ journalism as an organic sphere of revealing her socio-political, intellectual and creative energy. The body of signifi cant texts (articles, speeches, interviews) of the dissident writer involved in the interpretation is analysed through the prism of nation-building issues and its projection in the present. The crystallization of the presented na-tional identity theory and author’s ideological position is considered in the nation-building strategies context of the prominent thinkers-predecessors of Ivan Franko and Ivan Ohienko. The quintessence of his work is manifested in the following ideological and thematic dominants: Ukraine’s sovereignty priority, national exist-ence completeness, nation-building and state-building functions of language and culture, intelligentsia role in people’s spiritual progress. The imperative warning against national assimilation by Russian chauvinism in its most diverse manifes-tations claims a special status in journalism of Iryna Kalynets. The author’s pro-posed program principles of the struggle for national-state self-determination of Ukrainian people, nationally specifi c program of improving the nation and spiritual renewal of socio-political life of Ukraine in gained independence realities draw attention. Ideological constructions and reasoned expositions of nation-building issues in her journalism function in the permanent tradition direction of political satire (expressive tendency, polemical sharpness, rich informative resource, vari-ety of stylistic language means, emphasized pathos, bright expressive imagery). The article notes the emotional and revelatory pathos, patriotic fervour, political foresight and relevance for today of Iryna Kalynets’s journalistic work, substanti-ates the need for its further professional analytical understanding

Ethno Art Traditions in Fashion and Music as Factor of the Artist’s National Identity Formation

The purpose of the article is to determine the guidelines of the artist’s ethnocultural identity as a phenomenon of Ukrainian fashion and music. The research methodology is determined by comparative and systemic approaches, focused on a holistic analysis of the phenomenon of the artist's ethno-cultural identity. The novelty of the article. Ethnoartistic traditions are defined as a two-dimensional vector of reflection. Ethnoculture as a reality is inherited by an artist, enters modern culture on the basis of cultural creativity. Ethnoartistic traditions are realised in the professional activity of an artist, designer, and art critic. National identity cannot be imposed from above, be an ideological tool, a concept structured in the form of certain paradigms, models, realities of cultural creation. Identity arises as a living experience of communication, as a reality of the self-fulfillment of national self-awareness processes. Conclusions. Ethnoartistic traditions are a problem of the artist's will, freedom of choice, and freedom of self-determination. To a greater extent, this problem is an ethical one. A person gives themselves the opportunity to be nationally conscious in fashion and music – this is a determinant of freedom of will and choice. The search for horizons of national community and identity is always connected with the fact that fashion and musical priorities cannot be abstract, purely literary, cannot be a manifestation defined as an ideological construction. National identity is always connected with the living experience of ethno-cultural communication. The dichotomy of ethnogenesis and culturogenesis in the space of the artist's self-awareness always finds that harmonious unity, dispositive, which encourages, moreover, prompts the self-determination of the actor’s creativity and activity in fashionable discourse. Key words: ethnoculture, fashion, music, ethnoculturation, traditions, discourse

The Monarchist (Black Hundred) Movement in Russia in 1905–1917

The emergence of right-wing parties in Russia came as a reaction of conservative-minded segments of the population to the development of the revolutionary movement. These parties stood up for the autocracy and had played a significant role in the events of 1905–1907. The monarchist movement united the representatives of all social classes and became the most mass political movement in Russia during the inter-revolutionary period. The blackhundredist ideology was very critical about the projects of both socialist and liberalbourgeois reconstruction of Russia. Relying on traditional political and moral (primarily Christian) values, it came up with its own version of the non-capitalist development of the country. At the same time, a prominent place in ideological constructions of the right-wing movement was given to the antisemitism, which seriously affected the political image of monarchists. After the victory over the revolution in 1905–1907, the political activity of the right-wing movement had significantly decreased, which was greatly facilitated by the government, whose interest did not include the existence of an unconventional political force seeking to restore the “pre-manifest” (absolutist) regime. The discord and squabbles in the monarchist camp, caused by the clash of personal ambitions of right-wing figures, the passive behaviour of the party masses, who saw no point in continuing the political activity after the revolutionary ‘turmoil’ had come to its end, as well as financial difficulties, had also played their role. The surge in the right-wing activity caused by the outbreak of the First World War did not change this trend in general. In February 1917, the small-numbered and scattered right-wing organizations, that had already been experiencing decline, failed to oppose the revolutionary storm and disappeared from the stage of history without a fight.

Gendered radicalisation and ‘everyday practices’: An analysis of extreme right and Islamic State women-only forums

AbstractA growing amount of literature is being devoted to interrogating gendered dynamics in both violent extremism and terrorism, contributing to the integration of international and feminist security. This includes how such dynamics can shape differences in the motivations and participation of women and men. By critically analysing ideological gender constructs in two women-only extremist forums – the Women's Forum on Stormfront.org and Women Dawah, a Turkish-language pro-Islamic State group chat on Telegram – and employing feminist methodology, this article demonstrates how gendered online spaces influence women's ‘everyday practices’ within extremist movements. We argue that women-only online spaces not only facilitate gendered practices by allowing women to share everyday experiences, hold ideological discussions, and engage in debate, but also provide an important means to navigate these issues within the movement itself. In fact, women-only forums are actively used by women within extremist movements to exert greater agency in the face of otherwise constraining gendered ideological constructs. In turn, gendered everyday practices are reinforced by virtual communities that strengthen a sense of meaning – and purpose – in the movement, albeit being ideologically confined to the private sphere in many ways. This study sheds light not only on the differences in participation between women and men, but also on how such virtual communities can serve as spaces to frame and reinforce gendered practices in extremist movements. This has key implications for deradicalisation and disengagement strategies, which are at present overwhelmingly gender neutral. We provide evidence of how women navigate agency in these spaces, while challenging the stereotype that women in extremist movements are typically passive actors confined to traditional roles.

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy. By David M. Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann

Around the world, religion is helping to advance nationalistic ends, ginning up right-wing populism in anti-democratic, xenophobic ways. An overview of this transnational phenomenon that indicates religious modes of resistance to it would thus be a welcome addition to the bookshelf. Unfortunately, the slender volume under review here—which limits itself to Judeo-Christian responses and to the United States and Europe (plus Israel)—is too uneven to meet the need. It begins solidly enough with a chapter on the role of religion in the construction of contemporary nationalist ideologies, focusing on assaults on liberal democracy with particular reference to religious pluralism and the separation of church and state. The underlying argument is that religious nationalists go for named religious identity rather than actual beliefs and practices. This is made clear in the case of Germany, where the religiously observant turn out to be more resistant to religious nationalism than the nonobservant. But regrettably for a chapter whose title (“How to Understand the Populism of Europe”) promises considerable geographic sweep, Germany is the only country on the continent to receive attention.

La Ley de extranjería 1.094 de 1975 como dispositivo discursivo en el contexto de la dictadura cívico-militar

In our times, migration has become a priority issue on the international agenda. The need to have appropriate legislation on this matter is unavoidable, ensuring protection for those who move, seeking a better quality of life. In this work, we analyze the immigration law 1,094 promulgated by the Chilean civic-military dictatorship in 1975. Considering its discursive/legal status, we are interested in its analysis as a legal reference in relation to subsequent projects and the current Immigration Law, in force since the year 2021. For its reading, analysis and understanding, we have resorted to the concept of knowledge/power device, developed by Foucault, particularly in its discursive dimension. This allows us to characterize the semantic and ideological construction that is made of migrant subjects, in the context of a dictatorship, regulated by conditions of normative production typical of a totalitarian regime.

Ambrus Miskolczy. A román középkor időszerű kérdései. Régi-új viták és közelítések

Ambrus Miskolczy. <i>A román középkor időszerű kérdései. Régi-új viták és közelítések</i>

Verbal choice in the ideological construction of romance and migration in Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah

A novel is a composite of ideologies about individuals, groups, events or communities. Central to the construction of ideology is a clause, which survives on the existence of a verb, which could reveal an attitude to a particular ideology. This paper focuses on Chimamanda Adichie’s choice of verbs in constructing the two ideologies of romance and migration in Americanah. While data is randomly drawn from the novel, insights from Systemic Functional Grammar are useful in revealing the functions of the verbal items in the construction of romance and migration. The focus on the verb is justified since the choice of verb will take a central place in ideological construction. Findings show that some of the verbs used in depicting the two ideologies have a direct value of the ideology depicted while others rely on their contextual significance in “conjuring up” the intended ideologies. Specifically, the verbs of romance, which are either finite or non-finite (but usually lexically extensive), reveal the phenomenon at physical and psychological levels, but there are also some verbs that have emotive value, depicting a character’s assessment of other character’s perception or judgment of a phenomenon. The verbs of migration, which are either copula or extensive, are inclined towards depicting direction, linguistic competence of immigrants, their hope, disposition and challenges in America. The study concludes that a close examination of the verbs used in constructing romance and migration in the novel is a gateway to a further understanding of the text.

Dropkick Murphys vs. Scott Walker: Unpacking Populist Ideological Discourse in Digital Space

On January 24, 2015, the folk punk band Dropkick Murphys penned a tweet to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker that read “please stop using our music in any way…We literally hate you!!!” Within hours, thousands of users interacted with the post and a contentious mediated discussion materialized. By exporting the full conversation using the program BrandWatch and applying Sonja Foss’s ideological criticism approach, I found several recurrent ideological constructions reappear throughout the data. Through comments considering the band’s political activism as alienating, re-envisioning punk rock as right-wing, and framing Dropkick Murphys as inherently un-American and undesirable through Twitter comments, Walker supporters rhetorically dismiss the band and their message. These constructions show how new media audiences discursively construct ideologies to delegitimize opposition along the lines of political affiliation and illustrate the communicative mechanism of populism on a micro-level.

Law in the Margins: Economies of Illegality and Contested Sovereignties

Abstract Liberal theory has long fetishized state law as a fortress against disorder, anarchy, and private violence. To prevent violence writ large, it advocated, the nation-state should be endowed with its monopoly, as the impartial and rational guardian of civilization and social peace. Yet, as critics suggest, the normative binary of law/violence and the legal purity of the state is empirically untenable and, as such, remains an ideological construct sustained and perpetuated through law and its fictions. In this paper, I revisit these debates to reflect on legal fictions in the context of migration policing. I draw on ethnographic research I conducted with immigration and police officers in the UK. Amid the growing economies of illegality that rely on migrant labour which these officers are in charge of suppressing, their everyday work reveals spaces of legal murkiness and ambiguity. The paper explores the paradoxes, dilemmas and contradictions that such legal ambiguity gives rise to and their implications for state sovereignty.

Exploring Metaphorical Representations of Law and Order in China’s Government Work Reports: A Corpus-based Diachronic Analysis of Legal Metaphors

ABSTRACT The present study has conducted a diachronic analysis of law and order metaphors in a self-compiled corpus of China’s Government Work Reports (CGWR) over a span of 22 years (2000–2021). By mapping target domains with source domains, we categorized four major types of legal metaphors, including building, physical object, journey, and living being, among which physical object was overwhelmingly predominant. Our analysis suggests metaphorical expressions that highlight physicality more than specificity will constantly remain in use because the stability and universality of such metaphors are conducive to the dissemination and reinforcement of legal thoughts. Additionally, there is a direct correlation between legal metaphors and the government’s economic, political, and social concerns, as evidenced by increasing attention paid to various security issues and new challenges in China. Given that the rule of law with Chinese characteristics becomes more institutionally recognized and systematically theorized, legal metaphors are implemented in a top-down manner to justify the exercise of power in CGWRs, making Chinese people identified with the governing philosophy and further contributing to the ideological construction of discourse. This study is thus conducive to a general but insightful understanding of how political stances are embodied and reinforced persuasively in discourse.

Images of black faces in Italian colonialism: mobile essentialisms

AbstractThis study analyses the essential question of the role of visual and material culture in the construction of a mass racial ideology during the Fascist colonial empire. The hypothesis behind this essay is that representations of the facial features of colonised populations may be understood as agents that transform what are in fact inconsistent and vague notions of identity and race into concrete and effective ontologies, both in the scientific field and in the popular imaginary. The facial casts made by the anthropologist Lidio Cipriani and exhibited in the race pavilion of the very popular Mostra triennale delle Terre italiane d'Oltremare (1940) in Naples, the anthropological photographs and illustrations of the infamous journal La Difesa della razza (1938–43), and the advertising images representing African women's bodies, both gave consistency to the notion of race and incarnated its protean nature made up of narratives, metaphors, fantasies, and prejudices constructed and accumulated over time.

Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics

AbstractConceptualizations of competence that permeate applied linguistics systematically fail to account for the role of racialization in language learning and assessments thereof. To interrogate the racialization of linguistic competence, we first examine its discursive emergence in conjunction with the ideological construction of linguistic homogeneity as central to the naturalization of race within the context of European colonialism. We then track how ideas about linguistic competence took shape jointly with a genre of the human that is overrepresented as white, as well as how this particular genre of the human informed foundational conceptualizations of communicative competence. After analyzing relevant examples of how communicative competence has been taken up in ways that reify this racializing ideology, we end with an alternative conceptualization of the goals of language learning that focuses on the worldviews and lifeways of racialized communities to move beyond universalizing conceptions of competence as the desired outcome.

Мировоззренческая проблематика в современном академическом дискурсе: размышления над тематическим номером

The thematic issue of the "Journal of Political Research" offered to the reader is entirely devoted to the problems of the worldview phenomenon. The crisis of the existing world order, international tension, the turbulence of economic and socio-political processes especially actualize the theme of the role of values, identity, traditions, worldview pictures in the formation of social harmony, solidarity, social consolidation, the establishment of sustainable, creative and effective forms of relationships between man, society and the state in modern Russia. Therefore, one of the tasks of the thematic portfolio of the issue was to initiate discussion of the above issues in the domestic academic community. The authors of the issue proposed to consider various aspects of the chosen problem: the perception of basic values, factors and structures of Russia's socio-historical development; communication foundations of the modern worldview; aspects of ideological construction; the concept of worldview in public discourse; worldview and political and economic features, risks of digitalization of the state; political absenteeism among students; experience of the Soviet ideocracy. It is noteworthy that among the articles there are works both conceptually oriented, offering explanatory models of existing processes, and empirically based studies. This specificity is determined by the seriousness of the value, civilizational and geopolitical challenges facing our country. The involvement of the academic community in the discussion and understanding of the axiological sphere is strategically important in order to clearly understand and determine the system of Russia's worldview coordinates.

Inclusion or exclusion

The choice of a medium of instruction (MoI) is an ideological construct, closely linked to language, ideology and power. The Urdu/English-medium divide in Pakistan has reframed the ideologies in a way that a large majority of the rural population has become status conscious. English-Medium Instruction (EMI) policy has been used as a lens to examine parental ideologies of dropped-out children in language choice as MoI and to observe the gap between actual language policy and practices. Building on Spolsky’s (2004) Language Policy Model, a framework has been explicated to analyse the ideological change in the context of language choice with reference to EMI. Results suggest that the policy and practice gap concerning English has proven to be a tool of exclusion rather than inclusion for the masses and thus poor parents idealise English-medium schooling as the only option for a better future for their children, or otherwise pushing them out of public schools. This research, therefore, argues that in order to ensure inclusion, language-ineducation policy needs to be revisited on the principles of equity and impartiality so that it can win parents’ trust.

Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature

Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature

Normalising Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnamese cinema, 1990–2020: Ideology, popular appeal, and the market economy

The article discusses the representation of Hồ Chí Minh in modern Vietnamese cinema from 1990 to the present. The first feature film on Hồ Chí Minh's life was produced only in 1990, 31 years after his death. Since then, 6 more films have appeared. I explore the reasons why there were no feature films about Hồ Chí Minh before 1990 and why they eventually began to appear. I address the filmmakers’ attempts to reintroduce Hồ Chí Minh, especially to younger generations who know of him only through propaganda depicting him as a celibate paragon of virtue and through viewing his embalmed body in the Mausoleum he had objected to. I argue that these cinematographic projects to promote Hồ Chí Minh to younger Vietnamese have done very little to develop, or even maintain, his personal cult, a cult that the state endeavours to exploit to (re)establish its connection to the people, to overcome a prolonged crisis of legitimacy, and to garner popular support for the continuing leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party. The market economy and openness to the world have inevitably undermined the Hồ Chí Minh cult and ideological constructs supporting it.